While municipal administrators are tasked with the mission to protect their cities, the cost of running city surveillance programs can be overwhelming, especially installing cameras that are wired. Going wireless, therefore, becomes an ideal alternative.
City surveillance, or the use of security technology to monitor activities around a metropolis to keep it safe, has become a growingly important topic across the globe. This has gained more significance recently, after a string of terrorist attacks in Europe. The recent tragedies in major cities such as Paris, Brussels, and Nice underscore the need for more stringent security.
Yet while municipal administrators are tasked with the mission to protect their cities, the cost of running city surveillance solutions is often an issue, especially in the midst of constant budget constraints that cities face. And the cost of running city surveillance programs can be overwhelming, especially installing cameras that are wired.
“If you got a camera in, that's not a problem. The big cost is in infrastructure, the cabling, and the destruction it takes to put a cable in,” said Julian Rutland, European NVS Marketing Director at Canon Europe.
This has caused vendors, installers and users to look at wireless as an ideal alternative. During IFSEC 2016, Canon unveiled its wireless solution, part of its partnership with Digital Barriers. Under the partnership, Canon’s VB-R11VE speed dome is combined with Digital Barriers’ EdgeVis Live wireless technology that enables transmission over a wide range of wireless networks including 4G, 3G, GPRS, Wi-Fi and satellite connections at bandwidths as low as 9kbps.
What enables EdgeVis Live to do that is its video codec technology called TVI, which monitors the bandwidth at each instant and uses this information to adjust the amount of image detail so that it never exceeds the bandwidth available. This enables a constant frame rate and avoids missed frames or a build-up in time delay, making it suitable for video transmission not only from fixed cameras in city surveillance but also body-worn cameras on police officers and hidden/spy cameras in covert operations.
The technology also features retrieval of video recorded on the edge and packet-level AES256 bit encryption to enhance cybersecurity. Full remote control of the camera is also allowed, a value-added feature enabling operators to adjust the angle of the cameras to track suspicious people or objects more effectively.
“The risk in cities changes, and the location changes,” Rutland said. “You want to re-position the cameras to make sure you're looking where the risk is, and with wireless, you can do that. If you got it wired in, you can't.”
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